What a HORRIBLE ROTTEN DAY

[azonic]

I'm gonna try to keep this short. Here goes
I came home today to a burning smell in my room....immediately checked the tank and found my heater had shorted out and melted itself around the power strip.
After a struggle to remove it, I decided to remove the damaged powerbar and use a temporary one until I got out to walmart tonight to get a new one.
I quickly unplugged the skimmer and return pump and quickly plugged them into the other power strip which controls the tank lighting. Made sure to do it really quick so no water could back siphon. Anywho, after I cleaned up, I got ready to take the heater to the LFS to get fixed and left. This all happened around 5:30pm.....got to the store,got a new plug installed.....on my way back home I get a phone call from my girlfriend, wants a ride for supper for her and her friend before they went to a xmas party for their faculty at university......that was fine, went a drove them to a few places, picked myself up a bite to eat and headed home. Time now was approx 8:20pm.
When I drive up my street, you can easily tell when my lights on the tank are on because the window has a blue tint to it. As soon as I saw the blackness it hit me. I PLUGGED THE RETURN PUMP INTO THE LIGHTING STRIP......THAT"S ON A TIMER!!!!!!!!!!
Leaving my supper in the car, I ran into my house only to find a pool of water around the tank on the hardwood floor, and another inch inside the stand. The tank drained about 5 gallons or so all over my floor before the return lines stopped back siphoning. I'd been putting off drilling holes in them for so long and now it's bit me in the ass.
Anyways...after cleaning up the water, drying everything under the stand off, installing all new power strips and extension cords and taping all cords to their extensions and relabelling the power strips, etc, etc, I added new water to fill up what overflowed and of COURSE I couldn't get the overflow box to start a siphon for the life of me. I got about a half dozen friggin mouthfulls of salt water before I finally got the damn thing going again.
Anyway. After all of that, I'm finally going to bed. 3:20AM.
My supper is still sitting on the front passenger seat of the car. It's been one helluva friggin day for me.

 

[fishman830]

sorry bout that! i remember aqua.. somthing heater and the glass tube broke. and i smelled the burning as you said you did,
and by the way did you lose any livestock?

 

[azonic]

No, I didn't lose any livestock at all.
I kept two maxijet 1200's going in the tank while I was working on it and I also re-added the heater once I had the bulk of the water off the floor.
Knock on wood.

 

[yosemite sam]

Ugh, that is awful. I had my refugium crack and came home to a similar mess - water everywhere. Glad to hear you didn't lose anything.

 

[wwfstyle]

Azonic, sry to hear about your day. I think we have all had days like that. Now to shoot an idea at ya.... I have my syphone hose shortened and my out put hose from my sump as high as i can. In case of a power outage all the water in my tank will go down to my sump and I should have no over flow. Maybe you can do something as i. Hope this will give ya some other ideas that may help ya in the future.

 

[azonic]

Originally posted by wwfstyle
Azonic, sry to hear about your day. I think we have all had days like that. Now to shoot an idea at ya.... I have my syphone hose shortened and my out put hose from my sump as high as i can. In case of a power outage all the water in my tank will go down to my sump and I should have no over flow. Maybe you can do something as i. Hope this will give ya some other ideas that may help ya in the future.
Thanks for the suggestion. I solved the problem already. I simply drilled a hole in both of my return lines just below the water line of the tank. If the pump turns off, the sump can hold the amount of water that will be drained before the overflow and return lines stop siphoning.